John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham's, R-S.C., first act upon returning to Washington after the holiday recess should be to call a press conference and apologize to Susan Rice.

The two Senators led an ugly Republican and conservative media mob against the former UN Ambassador and current national security advisor, claiming she lied to the American people while appearing on Sunday morning political talk shows in the wake of the attacks on American facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Ultimately they were able to gin up enough opposition to prevent Rice from being appointed secretary of State.

McCain told CNN in November of last year, "everybody knew that it was an Al Qaeda attack, and she continued to tell the world through all of the talk shows that it was a 'spontaneous demonstration' sparked by a video." He continued, "That is not competence in my view. I think she should have known. She has never yet at this point declared that she was wrong."

It turns out McCain was wrong. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that "contrary to claims by some members of Congress, [the Benghazi attack] was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam."

Furthermore, the Times could not find "evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault." In fact "Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with Al Qaeda's international terrorist network." The only intelligence linking the Benghazi attack to the terrorist group was a phone call from an attacker to "a friend" in Africa bragging about his horrific exploits.

The Times' reporting makes it clear that when Lindsey Graham claimed at a press conference that Susan Rice was "disconnected to reality" or when John McCain told Charlie Rose that Rice, a Rhodes Scholar, was "not very bright," they were speaking without full command of the facts. These ugly attacks were designed to tarnish the reputation of a distinguished public servant in order to score some political points for Republicans.

What's shocking about the Times story is not that it laid bare core conservative myths about the attack in Benghazi – its that after 15 months, more than a dozen Congressional hearings, scores of witness interviews and tens of thousands of pages of documents produced, no Republican investigation has delivered a report as comprehensive as David Kirkpatrick's work in The New York Times.